The present invention relates generally to the field of computers, and more particularly to online group conversations.
An online group conversation may be based on emails or instant messaging systems, such as Sametime® (Sametime® and all Sametime®—based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation and/or its affiliates), Skype® (Skype® and all Skype®-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Skype Technologies S.A. and/or its affiliates), WeChat® (Wechat® and all Wechat®—based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tencent Holdings Limited and/or its affiliates). In many cases a participant in the online conversation may want to include one or more people to observe the discussion in the conversation in real time, however the participant may not want to explicitly add these observers as active participants in the conversation. In such cases, the participant may want to let the observers know what is going on in the discussion, but does not want to expose the identities of the observers, does not want the observers to participate in the conversation directly, or simply does not want other participants in the conversation to know these observers are watching over the discussion.